Jason Howell

UNDEAD DARLINGS #4: "Openings up"
on Howlarium

Dear John, 
Included is the forty dollars you asked for so you can get a new pair of lenses. That should cover it since you’ve already got Dorry’s frames. I hope you’ll be able to stop at some one hour place somewhere. Make sure to remind the girl to give you the senior discount because she’ll forget no matter how many toes you look like you’ve got in the grave.  


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UNDEAD DARLINGS #3: "Phone Lines"
on Howlarium

She holds the book but she
doesn't know how to read
with him standing over her
like that. She turns the pages,
placing and replacing the bookmark.


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UNDEAD DARLINGS #2
on Howlarium

"They assign me a groom. He is, of course, good-looking, albeit not my type. I must not be his, either, for he considers my small body with visible disappointment. He looks hopefully at the other bride. She is tall, long-nosed, dark-haired, Russian, bored. She looks through him. He adjusts his tie. I do not want him to touch me. "


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TOWARD THE JUGULAR
on Howlarium

"We live in a time when even routine communication has become incredibly fraught. I grieve that the current trend is to grant each other very little room for perceived errors in our conversations and emails and Facebook posts. We are quick to take offense, eager to assume ill intent, savage in our response to perceived slights or disagreements, convinced our own opinions are fact,  stubbornly disinclined to grant one another grace... and we hold one another responsible for a level of sensitivity bordering on clairvoyance. 

This extremity and rigidity seem to me unlikely to serve us in our human struggle to understand one another, to treat one another better, and to learn how to live together better. "


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LIVING YOUR TRUTH
on Howlarium

"Everyone who right now, to their own misfortune, wants me and the people I love dead, detained, or deported vividly imagines a world without us. If I am not at least as creative as my oppressor, then I suffer a failure that does not belong to me. ...

As far as I’m concerned, the role of creative writers in this moment is the same role it has been... To be fucking contemptible. To expose the belly of the cacophony by exposing the contents of our own stomachs. To be residents of that place others want to forget exists. It’s unromantic. "


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GO INTO YOURSELF
on Howlarium

"The experience of writing is indescribable and unmatched, and that is why people describe both teaching and writing as "a calling." I think that the best writing comes from the same place—that need, not to receive love but to give love. It's as if each of your students, or each of your poems, is that unanswerable question. There is hardly any hope of financial gain when it comes to much literary work. You have to love the questions."


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Hi, Jason, I am afraid my pc committed suicide recently so I am limited to short periods at the library and poor attempts to use the facilities of my phone. Normal service will resume asap. Glyn

CHILDLIKE PAGES FOR HARSH RED PENS
on Howlarium

"It’s the feeling that I’m at the absolute center of things, instead of off to one side—the feeling that the entire universe is streaming in on me. It’s a feeling of strength, of terrifying health, of much-more-aliveness. ... for me, childhood is above all a metaphor for a way of perceiving the world."     –Steven Millhauser

Writers and artists can feel a lot of pressure to have their work taken seriously by harsh people with advanced degrees. 
        Q: Do you ever find letting childlike simplicity into your work freeing? Is it ever something you aim for? What are some of the obstacles to, or anxieties around, allowing that kind of transparentness into the execution of a piece, or just into the way you allow yourself to perceive, in general? 


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LISTENING TO THE LAND SAVES MY LIFE
on Howlarium

Before I was a writer, I was a public defender in Kenosha, WI, doing my best to push back against a criminal justice system intent on perpetuating institutional racism. I spent all my time rotating between the wooden walls of the courthouse, the glass walls of the office, and the steel walls of the jail. 

A novice attorney, I was determined not to let my inexperience affect my clients, but I made mistakes. I walked back to my beat Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot after telling another client there wasn’t much I could do for her, and broke down sobbing with my forehead against the steering wheel in broad daylight. I became exhausted. I made more mistakes. 

One night, I came home from dinner and took all the Ambien sleeping pills I had just been prescribed that morning. I wanted to die. I was so tired. 
–Will Falk


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